IT WAS the kitten who did it, though no one knew but Martha. Aunt Jenny thought it was the work of Providence and Aunt Amy thought it was the result of her own smiles and caresses. Aunt Mary never thought about it at all, of course. But really it was the kitten. And what was this thing that the kitten accomplished? The taming of Martha. And why did Martha need taming? Because she came at twelve, a very barbarian, with freckles and unmanageable hair, under the dominion of three smooth-locked ladies, who never had a freckle and whose hair had always been smooth.

Perhaps it would be better to begin at the beginning which was twenty years before there was any kitten. Most serene and happy would have been the lives of the three Miss Clarkes, if it had not been for Arthur. Arthur was their brother, and the combination of prim, blonde girls and harum-scarum black-eyed boy, made a most surprising family. The son and heir was not looked on as a success by his sisters and the other staid and respectable citizens of Summerfield. He did not join the church and he did not go to college, he wedded no one of the many eligible town's daughters, and, lastly, on his father's death he did not settle down at home, to take care of his property and his sisters.

This last of his misdeeds had made a breach between himself and his sisters. The more serious, because of the very deep affection which lay at the bottom of their half apologetic demeanor toward their brother. The difference between them was augmented by his removal to a far western town and his marriage with one of the natives. For the next twelve or thirteen years they never saw him and heard of him but seldom. Then he died suddenly, after accomplishing his task of wasting all his money.

So it happened that Martha saw her aunts for the first time on the day of her father's funeral, and her dim recollection was of cold faces and mannerisms which worried her mother. Martha was the eldest of four and her mother was one of the ornamental of earth, and her father one of the restless. So the first eleven years of her existence was wandering up and down through many cities, attended with much care for her slender shoulders, and an amount of worldly experience such as forty years of life had not given to the elder generation. Then her father died and they all went to share the spendthrift poverty of the home, whence her mother drew her ideas of domestic economy.

Through wifehood and widowhood, to her deathbed, Mrs. Clarke clung to an unreasoning hate of her sisters-in-law, and a dread of the time when her children must come into their hands kept her struggling against death for months.

But just one month after her pitiful fight was over, Martha started for Summerfield.

Poor Martha! Never captive carried to slavery felt such dread as did she on her eastward journey. When the friend who had borne her company left her at a station near Summerfield, even the stoicism of Martha gave way before the horror of the unknown and she clung to the last landmark of her old life, with a sobbing eagerness, which even a carefully nurtured child might know.

But there was no trace of frail, human grief in the little maiden who lifted the sullen blackness of her big eyes to Aunt Jenny's face that evening, who received Aunt Mary's greeting with a self-possessed composure alarming to that shy and gentle lady, and who gave the same degree of cold attention to Aunt Amy's sweet speeches.

They had looked forward to the coming of Arthur's daughter with a strange mixture of excitement, pleasure, and dread. The dread was predominant now. For this stern little woman was not their flesh and blood, not the child of their brother, but of the woman who had kept them apart from their brother in his trouble and sickness and death.

Martha was quiet and docile enough. In fact she did what she was told with a resignation most depressing. Aunt Jenny took her to church and the sight of her critical dark eyes roving over minister and congregation spoiled the sermon for Aunt Jenny. Aunt Mary told her stories of her father intended to be gently humorous. In the midst of them Martha jumped up and ran off into the garden. She cried there for half an hour, but nobody ever knew, and this business lost her the little hold she had had on Aunt Mary's heart. Aunt Amy tried to amuse her and took her to Sunday-school, and to the Band of Hope. She gave her a doll and invited the neighbor's children to come and take tea. The doll was a source of secret amusement to Martha, but the visits of these pretty and proper children were trials which she could scarcely bear with patience.

All the while, as the aunts half suspected, she was criticising everything that came within the ken of her hungry eyes. She found Aunt Jenny imperious, Aunt Mary dull, and knew that Aunt Amy was thinking of her sweet smile as she smiled. For Martha was outside of it all, a mere spectator of this life of peace and quiet and plenty, and she secretly hungered after something to care for—something to take the place of the little brothers and sisters who had always run to her to have their faces washed and their aprons buttoned. They expected her to play with dolls, she, Martha Clarke, who had had real work to do and had learned to push and crowd her own way.

Months went by and the barrier was unbroken. One evening the tea bell rang again and again without bringing any Martha. The aunts were in consternation. Had she run away or was it a case of kidnapping? After nearly an hour the suspense was ended by the arrival of Martha. But such a Martha! Her neat raiment was muddy and torn. Her hair was in shocking disorder. Her right hand, tied up in a handkerchief, was emphatically bloody, but in spite of this, it was used to steady her bonnet, which she carried by the string, basket-wise, in her left hand.

Exclamations of horror and surprise burst from the astonished women. "Martha, where have you been? What have you been doing? What is the matter with your dress? Have you hurt your hand? Why, it's bloody! Has the child been fighting? Martha, are you going to answer?"

Martha was actually embarrassed. As she advanced into the lamplight they saw that her cheeks were crimson and her eyes sparkling, also that the contents of her bonnet was a dilapidated kitten. When she did speak, her voice was shriller than usual.

"I fell down in the mud and my hand is hurt," was her meager and hesitating answer.

"Where did the cat come from?"

"It isn't a cat, it's a kitten, and it was out in the yard, and I tried to catch it and it ran away and a dog chased it. When I came up, the dog was eating the kitten, and I hit him and then he bit me and pushed me down in the mud. But I'm going to keep the kitten." The last defiantly, then on second thought, she added:

"If you please. It's awfully hurt, that kitten."

In the silence that followed the shrill child-voice the aunts looked at each other and one thought was in the mind of each. "She looks like Arthur."

When Martha went to bed that night the kitten, with its wounds all dressed, was slumbering peacefully before the kitchen fire.

Time passed on happily for the kitten, which was not very much injured after all, and full of new interest for Martha, who plunged head and soul into the education of the kitten. Toward her aunts her feeling was unchanged. She drew a line between them and the kitten.

One evening Aunt Jenny and Aunt Amy had gone to prayer-meeting. Aunt Mary was not well and she sat bolstered up in a rocking-chair, knitting, before the bright fire in the sitting-room grate. Martha sat beside her, also knitting, in theory, but in practice carrying on a flirtation with the kitten, which was now a very gay kitten, indeed. An empty rocking-chair stood very near the fire and the kitten was leaping back and forth between its chair and Martha's, making its attacks with much caution and its retreats with much speed. Aunt Mary was sleepily watching the fun.

Suddenly there was a loud crash. The kitten had fallen into the fire in such a fashion as to knock over the rocking chair in front of the grate. It was a prisoner in the fiery furnace.

Many years had passed since Aunt Mary had moved so quickly. She threw herself at the rocking-chair and flung it to one side. She snatched up the unfortunate kitten and made one rush to the kitchen and the kerosene can, and by the time Martha overtook her, was soaking the poor little burned paws.

Half an hour later when Aunts Jenny and Amy opened the sitting-room door, an astonishing sight met their eyes. The firelight redness flickered over the excited faces of Martha and Aunt Mary laughing and talking eagerly together, Martha no longer dignified and Aunt Mary no longer shy. That was the beginning of the end, but Aunt Mary was always Martha's favorite.

And it was the little kitten who did it.